Creative Commons: Rethinking Copyright

Larry Lessig’s recent talk at Educause is now available online at Blip.Tv. Lessig is an outstanding speaker and eloquently builds a compelling argument on why copyright laws have increasingly become caustic to education, science and the free sharing of knowledge.

Lessig, a Havard Law professor and expert on cyberlaw, is the principal architect of the Creative Commons movement. Unlike the “all” rights reserved terms of traditional copyright law, Creative Commons attempts to provide an open license framework where content creators may share their work while still maintaining some reserved rights of ownership, attribution and dissemination.

Creative Commons licensed works are growing rapidly. If you have ever accessed Wikipedia for a quick fact check, you’ve benefited from their Creative Commons license on content and material. For many additional, excellent examples, visit the Creative Commons Content Directory. The directory contains numerous audio, video and picture repositories which may be mined for high quality, free content. Recently Google image search began offering an advanced filter for finding pictures tagged for reuse.